This collagist composition by Agnès has two main characters. You may hear something else. You may also follow the indications and listen behind and between the sounds. You can observe and consequently partake in an alchimist process. Meet Tarzan and Lucy.

Tarzan
John Clayton is born in the western coastal jungles of equatorial Africa to a marooned couple from England, John and Alice (Rutherford) Clayton, Lord and Lady Greystoke. Adopted as an infant by the she-ape Kala after his parents died (his father is killed by the savage king ape Kerchak), Clayton is named “Tarzan” (“White Skin” in the ape language) and raised in ignorance of his human heritage.

Feeling alienated from his peers due to their physical differences, he discovers his true parents’ cabin, where he first learns of others like himself in their books, with which he eventually teaches himself to read. As he grows up, Tarzan becomes a skilled hunter, gradually arousing the jealousy of Kerchak, the ape leader.

Later, a tribe of black Africans settles in the area, and Kala is killed by one of its hunters. Avenging himself on the killer, Tarzan begins an antagonistic relationship with the tribe, raiding its village for weapons and practicing cruel pranks on them. They, in turn, regard him as an evil spirit and attempt to placate him.

Lucy
Lucy was discovered in 1974 by anthropologist Professor Donald Johanson and his student Tom Gray in a maze of ravines at Hadar in northern Ethiopia.Johanson and Gray were out searching the scorched terrain for animal bones in the sand, ash and silt when they spotted a tiny fragment of arm bone.

Johanson immediately recognised it as belonging to a hominid. As they looked up the slope, they saw more bone fragments: ribs, vertebrae, thighbones and a partial jawbone. They eventually unearthed 47 bones of a skeleton – nearly 40% of a hominid, or humanlike creature, that lived around 3.2 million years ago.

Like a chimpanzee, Lucy had a small brain, long, dangly arms, short legs and a cone-shaped thorax with a large belly. But the structure of her knee and pelvis show that she routinely walked upright on two legs, like us.

This form of locomotion, known as ‘bipedalism’, is the single most important difference between humans and apes, placing Lucy firmly within the human family.